


bonds of a twisted tree

by m_peridot



Series: implications of a civilian mindset [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Introspection, no beta we die like Sakura's character development
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28757928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_peridot/pseuds/m_peridot
Summary: After the Exams, Sakura is numb.No one notices, and one by one her boys leave, eyes skipping over her indistinct form. And she lets them, too tired to protest, even nominally.
Relationships: Dai-nana-han | Team 7 & Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto
Series: implications of a civilian mindset [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1898506
Kudos: 25





	bonds of a twisted tree

She is on the rooftop of the hospital and thinks  _ it is a dreary day.  _

The sun has cleared the clouds, as if any hint of moisture is a sin unable to be met with anything less than fire and ash, and it is too bright and too blue, like Konoha always, always is, cursed with perfect weather since the First and his created forest. 

Sakura remembers that once she hated the light, piercing and slipping into the smallest of spaces — that once (after Wave, after the Exams) she had poured her rest of her emotions into loathing the sky and how it offered no solace. She had felt exposed then, perhaps helpless, perhaps vulnerable; now, however, it makes no difference. 

And perhaps she is numb, still numb, ever since the Exams, but nobody has noticed. 

Perhaps that is why her eyes dull in apathy as she watches her boys’ displays of overwhelming emotion — annoyance and anger and frustration and passion all coming together in a toxic waste that thrums through their molded chakra. If they were better at control, she muses, a distant thought in a distant mind, they wouldn’t leak enough fire for her to physically  _ feel _ the overflow. She doesn’t need the signal; who would, when one can see it in every straining muscle, in Naruto’s grin and Sasuke’s grimace? 

But her boys have never loved what she loves; they have always craved brighter things, which is why they burn in the sun even now. 

If they had been more patient, maybe they would have let her fill in the gaps where they couldn’t go. The softer shadow to their brashness, patching the openings they inevitably left with their flashy displays. 

There are openings even now. She has learned to see them in her desperation, and as they strike to kill ( _ What are they thinking? They are a team, she and they. One cannot exist as a third of a whole, and she cannot fathom that they would destroy themselves and her. _ ) she knows that anyone skilled enough could have killed them seven times in the last five minutes. 

But perhaps even in their murder they do not take each other seriously. Because her boys have always believed themselves to be invulnerable and it lines the cracks in their offense and shatters whole their defense. Sasuke is truly desperate today, and Naruto is confused and as brash as ever. He thinks, mistakenly, that this is just a fight, like countless other fights, the difference simply being his own growth. It is not.

Sasuke knows her helplessness but has not learned that it is the type of helplessness that applies to  _ everyone _ , not just  _ that man _ . He forgets to be helpless and therefore thinks himself more than he is. He eliminates his could-have-beens faster than any enemy could. 

He is relearning his helplessness now and it is breaking him.

Sasuke has never been quiet about his ambitions, and those ambitions do not include Konoha or Naruto or her. They do not account for helplessness; a paradox, because it is helplessness that defines his ambition. 

(She will wonder later if loyalty never had time to strangle him, the way it did Naruto — the way it did her — she will wonder that no one tagged him a flight risk, that no one tried to force patriotism down his throat. That no one saw his helplessness and tried to take it away — because to desire power is the Will of Fire, but being helpless is antithetical to Konoha, though it defines their shinobi. Sasuke had too many eyes on him for them to overlook his divergence. She will wonder at the shortsightedness of the village, and then she will stop wondering, because dwelling on could-have-beens is a luxury she can ill afford.)

(When loyalty slips from her, a discarded cloak, and she is strangely vulnerable again, she will only have could-have-beens for company at the bar. Then she will fall silent and brood, having no answers and no resolutions.)

There are openings even now, ones that would makes them one sided and not evenly matched, but neither Naruto nor Sasuke _ sees _ and she wonders what would happen to her if they died then and there.

She watches the two killing strikes come closer and closer still and wonders, in the split second before they hit, if she would cry, as she did on the Bridge. If she would feel anything, for today feels trapped in amber and struggling to wake.

But Kakashi materializes beside her — stopping for a tenth of a moment to shoot her an inscrutable look — and jumps up between the two boys, using their wide-open bodies to redirect the blasts into the metal water towers. It seems effortless, as if they had simply been bickering children. She wonders if Kakashi even considers them shinobi or if he still sees the immature brats he picked up from the Academy. They are using S-ranked ninjutsu but they still haven’t learned the basics. 

The Chidori decimates the tower and abruptly she and the rooftop are drenched. She doesn’t even flinch, her eyes slowly blinking through the amber, and wonders why they care, why they think that this strength a boast.

(Because no matter the attack, if you crushed the lungs and the heart, if your hand went straight through a body without resistance, the body would cease to function, lungs stop breathing, heart give a last stutter. And you would be left with a messy aftermath: a destroyed house, perhaps, or a deep fissure in the ground, the blood running sticky-sweet down your hand to your wrist and then your arm, a line of uncomfortably crimson roots. You would be left with blood under your fingernails, with blood in between your fingers, with blood on your face and your clothes –

Then, maybe, you’d scrub, till only a hint of brown tinged your fingertips. 

Then, maybe, you’d burn your clothes, staring at the flames licking the blood which, in its last moments, reverts to living crimson. 

Then, maybe, the memory would forever be in the corners of your mind, growing, a weed that was never eradicated, till its thorns make you scream and scream and  _ scream– _ )

No. Sakura thinks that perhaps they do not understand. 

Team Seven are still children. No shinobi would act as they.

When Kakashi’s hand went straight through Haku’s chest, perhaps she was the only one looking. 

Naruto saw the aftermath, concentrated on Zabuza, but Sakura couldn’t wrench her eyes from the last remnant of the Yuki clan. And she saw the horrific remains of the boy’s body, looked and glanced inadvertently at Sasuke (who she thought had been  _ erased _ ), and the ghost of a thought passed through her mind, the ghost whispering that she would much rather kill cleanly, kill without a mark, than to be left with the husk of a person, so mangled and destroyed that the chest no longer existed, giving way to a red-burnt stain on the bridge. She would rather believe that they were sleeping, rather a kill with the gentlest of touches for her own peace of mind (she is selfish,  _ remember _ ).

(When Sasuke had revealed the same white-hot flickers around his hand during the Finals, when he’d rushed the mad Suna-nin with bared teeth and a wild light in his eyes—so different from Kakashi’s frigid expression as he looked down on the body impaled on his arm—Sakura had glanced at Kakashi, uncomprehending  _ because why would anyone pass down such a horrifying attack to someone who’d use it so recklessly.  _ She’d glanced to Kakashi, expecting something like an explanation, and had found his assessing gaze on Sasuke, a hint of ice and a tang of iron.)

She watches Kakashi, his face grim and unforgiving, his voice unchanged and lazy, casual, as if his students hadn’t just tried to kill each other, watches the boys storm off, hearts beating too much blood into their veins. 

(They, the three broken students of a broken teacher, have a bond that goes deeper than blood spilled together, a bond that grows twisted and bent, but much too quickly all the same. They cannot be apathetic towards each other—no matter Sakura’s exterior, no matter Sasuke’s madness and hatred, no matter Naruto’s pariahdom and the villager’s hatred for one, adoration for the other, and a complete dismissal of the last. Their bonds chain them because they cling to each other, push each other away, because they have no one else, because they are all alone. Because they cling with an intensity of touch on lacerated skin.)

(Sakura feels a hollowness when she sees them leaving, when she continues to simply watch as they leave—who does she have left? Her parents? She herself had told them when she made genin that she was an adult. That she didn’t need them. They hadn’t protested. They see each other, but there are no more words, and Sakura wonders when they had grown so apart. In her fanaticism, she lost Ino, and lost her again in the preliminaries. She doesn’t remember what had happened after the shintenshin and is no longer certain that she wants to remember. Sakura is alone; Sakura clings to her team.)

(But she will be forever forgotten, forever forsaken and left in the village as her two rash teammates leave again and again and  _ again. _ )

(They are so caught up in their similarities that they forget that she is just as lonely as they.)

So only she remains, left on the flooded rooftop, the sunlight glaring off the surface of the waters, burning too brightly to watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you want to follow me, by twitter is twitter.com/m_peridot_


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